Traffic is building up in cities throughout the world. Not only does this increase congestion and the likelihood of an accident, but it has a devastating impact on the environment. We believe mobile technology can help alleviate these problems and, together with Scania and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, are developing next-generation transportation use cases.

5G gets the green light

Vehicles will soon have the power to communicate with each other, and with other devices on the road. This will improve safety, lead to pre-payments on toll roads, grant access to additional services that can warn of upcoming dangers, or provide other information that is of interest for the drivers.

Another hot topic is self-driving vehicles. Although they are partially autonomous, information retrieved from other sources and vehicles will be needed; this requires enhanced radio connectivity, knowledge based management, and data analytics.

5G will fuel these innovations – particularly as it is based on existing LTE infrastructure, which is widely deployed and has a growing global footprint.

We plan to build transport use cases incrementally, with an initial focus on public urban transport:

Driver assistance

Buses and trucks with human drivers receive contextual information to improve efficiency. Real-time recommendations to drivers and passengers offer a compelling service at a lower operational cost with a reduced environmental impact.

Remote operation

Vehicles such as buses or trucks are autonomous, and supervised by off-board human operators or, in certain circumstances, remotely driven by human operators in remote operation centers.

Full automation

Vehicles are autonomous and supervised by software, such as an automated off-board operator.

Autonomy moves up a gear

Vehicle platooning can be semi- or fully automated. It creates a convoy for vehicles to travel very close to each other, coordinating breaking and acceleration. This increases road capacity and can help address commuting demands at peak hours.

For instance, dynamically adding driverless buses into a route to meet passenger demand is an attractive and cost-efficient proposition for fleet operators. We are evaluating different radio technologies that could be used for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, which will eventually evolve the LTE standard and allow 5G to play an important role in V2X (vehicle-to-everything). Additionally, we aim to utilize complex systems and knowledge management to optimize the platooning concept and make greater fuel savings.

Scania video

Steering towards V2X

A major enabler of auto industry transformation will be 5G mobile networks, which will be key to providing connectivity services for both V2V and V2I (vehicle to-infrastructure) communications.

The next generation of intelligent transport systems (ITS) will combine both V2V and V2I, allowing vehicles to operate autonomously and be controlled and monitored from cloud-hosted software. Such systems may involve remote management of a fleet of vehicles, where a remote operator or an automated system is in control of all vehicles.

As LTE and 5G combine different connectivity paths using a common radio interface, the technologies can facilitate V2V, V2I and V2P (vehicle-to-pedestrian) communications:

V2V allows vehicles to exchange data directly, or via the network infrastructure as and when required

V2I enables communication to road side infrastructure, as well as cloud services for vehicles

With cellular LTE, V2P extends ITS services to handheld devices

"Ericsson is helping us shape the future of connectivity and technology leadership in mobility, broadband and cloud. We have a shared vision of a connected network for transport, and our latest research project proves that the use of 5G networks creates new opportunities for transport."

Henrik Henriksson, President and CEO Scania

Directly from A to B

A 5G network can reliably transfer mission-critical data over long distances; for example, to remote traffic or vehicle operation centers. To guarantee this, we apply the concept of network slicing, ensuring traffic to and from the vehicle is isolated from other types of traffic.

Directly A to B

Explore more about our research collaboration with Scania:

V2V communications enable new paths to efficiency, safety and sustainability.

Remotely operating a vehicle with 5G

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